You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians

Cozy songs for fall, handpicked by two jazz pianists who take sweater weather very seriously. From Shirley Horn and Norah Jones to D’Angelo, Nick Drake and a surprisingly cozy cut from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. 

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About You'll Hear It:

Jazz pianists Adam Maness an...

Even if you don't recognize his name, you've heard his sound. Jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove played trumpet on, and contributed arrangements to, D'Angelo's Voodoo, Common's Like Water for Chocolate, and Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun. He was equally at home with neo-soul and hip-hop, and straight-ahead acoustic jazz. At the same time he was contributing to era-defining Soulquarian projects, he was producing music with his jazz quintet.

Today, jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin listen to his 2008 masterpiece Earfood and explore why it may be the perfect jazz album for the jazz-curious neo-soul fan.

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Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin dig into the You'll Hear It mailbag, answering your questions and checking out the tunes you always wanted them to hear. Plus, a trivia round inspired by your comments.

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Learn to play tracks from You'll Hear It. Join the You'll Hear It Players C...

D'Angelo's Black Messiah is one of the greatest albums of the 21st century. You can hear his musical influences all over it: Prince's arrangements, the Bee Gees' falsettos, Jimi Hendrix's guitar, Sly's groove. But the alchemy that makes Black Messiah so powerful could only come from one mind: D'Angelo, the artist who gave us Voodoo and Brown Sugar.

Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin unpack D'Angelo's Black Messiah track by track, detailing what their trained ears hear in the music, and highlighting new textures, harmonies, and song structures you may have missed on the first listen. 

Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin play each other their favorite Ahmad Jamal tunes to build the ULTIMATE Ahmad Jamal playlist. 

Learn to play tracks from You'll Hear It. Join the You'll Hear It Players Club: 
https://yhi.link/players-club

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Learn to talk like a jazz musician. Download the Liner Notes FREE today: 
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Watch Ahmad Jamal at Studio 61: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KFMLNop0_g&t=607s

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Waltz for Debby is the sound that all "boring coffeehouse jazz" tries to imitate, but none can replicate. Featuring Bill Evans on piano, Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums, this 1962 live album has become the template for every AI jazz playlist. And yet, it stands apart as one of the greatest jazz piano trio albums of all time. Pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin listen to the full album, track-by-track, describing what they hear in the music that lends this album its undeniable humanity.

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Learn to play tracks from You'll Hear...

Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin take turns playing each other songs, and the goal is to get the biggest involuntary reaction out of the other guy. Along the way, they break down what's actually happening in the music. In a final round, they have to sit through their opponent's pick without cracking. 

Who gets the best reactions? You decide. Share your verdict in the comments.

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Learn to play Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean". Join the You'll Hear It Players Club: 
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Le...

Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin unpack Radiohead's 2007 masterpiece 'In Rainbows', track-by-track. Hear about the harmonies, odd time signatures, Thom Yorke's singing technique and the production choices that give this album its sound. And learn why many of the musical choices made for 'In Rainbows' are strange for an album that hit #1 on the US and UK charts, and sold three million copies.

If you're hearing 'In Rainbows' for the first time, you're not alone. So is Peter! And if you're a Radiohead fan (like Adam), watch for Peter's reaction to, and verdict on, your favorite...

New albums all hand-picked from jazz pianist Adam Maness for your listening pleasure. 

00:00 - Intro

01:51- Epiphanie - Domi & JD Beck
https://store.bluenote.com/products/domi-jd-beck-who-asked?srsltid=AfmBOoqy83sYVjg7gWOWEPzDP1lzL0qSN3BWoiNb80SR6foAtB1hFJUi 

05:45 - Solidarity Song - Terri Lyne Carrington
https://terrilynecarrington.bandcamp.com/album/trip-the-night-fantastic

08:01 - Eye Level - Fathers
https://store.bluenote.com/products/fathers-fathers?variant=45730941010111&utm_source=Original&utm_campaign=KennyBeats20260610&utm_medium=direct&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bluenote.com%2F&utm_board=bluenote&utm_country=US&utm_linkurl=bl...

Learn to play "Isn't She Lovely", even if you've never played a note. Led by You'll Hear It co-host Adam Maness, this special lesson is simple enough to follow, even for absolute beginners. 

You've spent an hour listening to Adam and Peter take the album apart. Now, you can sit down and play it in the Players Club: https://yhi.link/stevie-sitkol

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Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life is all killer, no filler. Every track is a masterpiece. It's almost TOO easy for two jazz pianists in the business of r...

Jazz pianist Adam Maness picks his 8 top new releases in July for your listening pleasure

You'll Hear It is a weekly listening party for people who love music ... a little too much. Every Monday, Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin sit down with one great album and break it down track-by-track. They listen, demonstrate what they are hearing, and put words to the moments you have always felt and haven't been able to explain. You’ll never hear your favorite albums the same way again.

You'll Hear It returns with Season 15: August 2026. 

:fire: Don’t Miss Our Best Price of the Year! (Ending Soon)
https://www.openstudiojazz.com/summer-sale-2026/

Adam and Peter break down Prince and the Revolution's Purple Rain, the 1984 soundtrack that turned him into a global superstar. They go track by track, from "Let's Go Crazy" to the title song. With keyboards in hand, they break down the sophisticated music theory underneath this pop hit to reveal the hidden qualities that make this album great. You'll never hear Purple Rain the same way again.

Stay tuned to the end of the episode for a bo...

Weather Report's Heavy Weather became one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time. But there's so much more to it than "Birdland", Heavy Weather's radio hit. In fact, Peter makes the case that it might just be the weakest moment of the entire record.

Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin break it down track-by-track: From Jaco Pastorius's fiery fretless bass, to Joe Zawinul's beautiful piano, to the less-than-perfect production. You'll never hear Heavy Weather the same way again.

0:00 Heavy Weather - Weather Report
2:55 The Origins of Weather Report
6:29 Jaco Pastorius Joins...

Check out the latest jazz and jazz-adjacent releases for June 2026 with host and jazz drummer Kaleb Kirby.

With her 1974 masterpiece Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell transforms from folk singer into something harder to define.

Her piano playing matures. Her songwriting blossoms into one of the richest harmonic and melodic color palettes we've ever heard up to this point. Not to mention her incredible lyricism and melodies. And she brings a new production sensibility from her backing band: a group of jazz musicians called The LA Express.

In this episode of You'll Hear It, Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin break down Joni Mitchell's greatest artistic achievement (and her greatest commercial success...

Jazz musicians Adam Maness and Peter Martin review their three favorite songs from Michael Jackson's most iconic albums: Bad, Thriller and Off the Wall. And their choices aren't what you might expect. 

Plus - Adam, Peter and the Open Studio band play their jazzy interpretation of Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal. 

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Off the Wall: https://youtu.be/jR9zxGueeq4

Thriller: https://youtu.be/KZx6W3SI8JA

Bad: htt...

Adam Maness brings you the freshest releases of May 2026!

0:00 Intro
0:50 Jeff Parker
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/happy-today
3:45 Greg Hutchinson
https://www.allmusic.com/album/kind-of-now-mw0004778588 
6:15 Chris Potter
https://chrispotterjazz.bandcamp.com/album/alive-with-ghosts-today
9:09 New Jazz Underground
https://www.allmusic.com/album/hoodies-mw0004791891
11:04 Virginia MacDonald
https://virginiamacdonald.bandcamp.com/album/in-search-of
13:00 Harry Skoler
https://harryskoler1.bandcamp.com/album/echoes
15:05 Laurie Anderson & Sexmob
https://laurieanderson.bandcamp.com/album/let-x-x-live
17:06 Alabaster DePlume
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/dear-children-of-our-children-i-knew-epilogue
19:31 Ben Wolfe
https://b...

Sonny Rollins passed away this week at 95. Jazz pianists Peter and Adam are listening through the recordings that defined his career and made him one of the most influential musicians in jazz history. 

From his earliest bebop tunes to Saxophone Colossus to A Night at the Village Vanguard, they trace the arc of a player who kept raising the bar on himself even when the rest of the world thought he'd already cleared it. Plus - they talk through the legendary Williamsburg Bridge sabbatical: two years of practicing up to 16 hours a day.

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Miles Davis's Kind of Blue is one of the greatest albums of all time - possibly THE greatest. But it's not perfect. 

In this special episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Peter Martin and Adam Maness break down this classic record, track-by-track, to uncover why it has become so legendary. They dig into what's really going on in the music during this album's best moments: Miles's trumpet solo on "So What", Wynton Kelly's piano solo on "Freddie Freeloader", John Coltrane's entrance on "Blue in Green".

Plus - we learn more about what Miles was d...

Herbie Hancock's Thrust (1974) is one of the most influential jazz-funk records ever made. Peter Martin and Adam Maness break down the full album, track-by-track: Mike Clark's displaced backbeats, why Paul Jackson is such an unusual bass player and possibly the greatest Rhodes solo of all time. Plus - Adam shares a story about learning "Spank-A-Lee" at 16, and Peter tells us about meeting Paul Jackson for the first time. And ... is "Actual Proof" ACTUALLY the best track on the album?

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Could Parliament be the most important band of the 1970s? Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin break down Parliament's 1975 masterpiece Mothership Connection track-by-track: Bootsy Collins bass lines that launched a thousand samples, grooves that lock you in and won't let go, and the New Orleans connection that George Clinton says started the whole thing. Plus: isolated bass and drums stems. 

You'll never hear Parliament the same way again.

Chapters Legend:
🎧 Listening to a track 🎹 Music theory breakdown 🎵 Live studio jam

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Start your free Open Studio trial for ALLLLL your jazz...

Join Adam Maness as he delves into the best new music released in April 2026 (ish). This month we're featuring the incredible microtonal Angine de Poitrine and many more!

YHI + McBride = Ray Charles?! Christian McBride - bassist, Grammy winner and one of the greatest musical minds working today - joins Adam and Peter on You'll Hear It to share his desert island album.

If you know Christian, you know that his musical hero is James Brown. But Christian isn't bringing a James Brown pick. Instead, he's bringing one from his hero's hero ... Ray Charles.

This album was a risky move for Charles - unlike anything else he'd released at that time. At the peak of his power, he set aside the qualities that made...

You've never heard Kid A like THIS. Jazz musicians Adam Maness and Peter Martin break down Radiohead's 2000 art rock MASTERPIECE track-by-track to uncover what's really happening in the music that makes this album so incredible. 

Why do we love Radiohead's Kid A so much? Watch to find out.

PLUS - Jazz musicians play Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place". One shot, one take, no AI. FULL video: https://youtu.be/c5w9BHKe0rc

Chapters Legend:
 🎧 Listening to a track     🎹 Music theory breakdown     🎵 Live studio jam

Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin' capture Miles Davis on one of music history's most remarkable upswings. He had recently become clean after a years-long heroin addiction that led to his exclusion from major record labels and clubs. And now, in 1956, he had a deal with Columbia - the Cadillac of record labels - and a band he loved: Red Garland on piano, Philly Joe Jones on drums, Paul Chambers on bass and John Coltrane playing the sax. 

In this episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Peter Martin and Adam Maness go through each album. They discuss t...

Marvin Gaye's I Want You could be one of his greatest albums, and he didn't even write it. Producer Leon Ware wrote most of the songs for himself. Marvin Gaye was only supposed to record the title track. But he heard Leon playing a demo of the album one night and stayed up listening until morning. The next day, he asked Ware if he could have the whole thing.

In this episode, Peter and Adam break down why the title track, "I Want You", might be one of his best songs, and whether the rest of the...

Buena Vista Social Club: The album so good it's life-affirming. And it almost didn't happen.

In 1996, an American musician landed in Cuba to record a music project with Malian musicians. But when they didn't show up, Ry Cooder and his producer, Juan de Marcos González, went looking for replacements. 

That's when they found Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer and Rubén González, who had seen their musical prime decades earlier in the 40s and 50s. Compay was nearing his 90s, and some believed he had died, until he showed up on Buena Vista Social Club...

What happens when you put three of jazz's biggest personalities in a studio for a day? You get Money Jungle: Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach. Can it work? Miles Davis hated it. Others revere it. And the story behind this album is WILD.

It's perhaps the most tense album we've ever listened to. And this episode of You'll Hear It is possibly the most we have ever disagreed about an album! Listen for the music, the hot takes, or just to see what all the fuss is about. No matter your reason for listening to...

We're looking at the best jazz releases of March 2026! Listen with pianist Adam Maness as he breaks down and reacts to these great tracks.

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Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington: The musicians on this album were already legends when it came out in 1955. 

Each of them completely reinvented how people play their instruments. Drummer Kenny Clarke: the originator of so much of modern drumming language. Bass player Oscar Pettiford: possibly the greatest bass soloist in the history of the instrument. And then there's Monk, one of the singular greatest pianists of all time. And here they are playing the music of Duke Ellington: an untouchable legend. 

The result is an album that brought Monk's genius to the masses. And it ma...

D'Angelo's Brown Sugar sounded like nothing else in 1995. R&B was slick, polished, and built for clubs. D'Angelo later said the "deeper consciousness" had gone out of contemporary music. Questlove later wrote that contemporary R&B had become "trite" and "soulless" ... and then there was Brown Sugar, D'Angelo's debut album. It sounded more like the '70s than the '90s. More like church than the club. 

On this episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin go track by track through D'Angelo's debut, pulling apart the vocal stems, naming the jazz chords u...

Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) may be the most controversial album in jazz history, and one of the most important.

In 1959, a broke musician from Fort Worth, Texas arrived in New York City with a plastic saxophone and a band that didn't play by the rules. And EVERYONE had an opinion about it.

Jazz legends hated it. Miles Davis said Ornette was "all screwed up inside." Max Roach punched him in the mouth. Dizzy Gillespie said Ornette's music wasn't even jazz. Meanwhile, Leonard Berstein and John Coltrane celebrated him.

So...

What happens when you let a musical genius make the album of his dreams? You get Stevie Wonder's Music of My Mind (1972), the start of the greatest run in music history. 

Music of My Mind would be the first of a five-album run that formed Stevie Wonder's Classic Period, including Talking Book (1972), Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) and Songs in the Key of Life (1976).

In this episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin dive into every track on Music of My Mind, listening to isolated stems and breaking down the theory b...

We're looking at the best jazz releases of February 2026! Listen with pianist Adam Maness as he breaks down and reacts to these great tracks.

Start your free Open Studio trial for ALLLLL your jazz lesson needs: 
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Charlie Parker was punk rock before there was punk rock. His bebop was underground music: subversive, intellectual, and a major departure from popular music of the day (think: Nat King Cole, The Andrews Sisters, Perry Como). He was an intellectual heavyweight, nearly untouchable in his technical ability and pushing music to places no one else was daring to go. So where did Charlie Parker with Strings, his most accessible album, come from?

It's not Bird going commercial, like some have claimed. Charlie Parker with Strings is an album he fought to make. He loved Bach and Stravinsky...

Is Steely Dan's Gaucho more perfect than Aja? Maybe even ... too perfect? Two years in the studio. The greatest session musicians alive asked to play take after take after take until it was exactly right. And sometimes that STILL wasn't enough for Donald Fagen and Walter Becker.

On today's episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Peter Martin and Adam Maness are breaking down the 1980 album track by track: the jazz harmony hiding inside those smooth grooves, the abstract poetry of the lyrics, and the insane stories behind how this thing got made. Including the $150,000 drum machine...

The Impossible follow-up: Michael Jackson's 1987 album Bad. Five years after Thriller changed everything, Michael returned with a record that would become one of the best-selling of all time, win two Grammys, feature some of the greatest musicians in the world (hey, Stevie Wonder!) ... and somehow still gets called a letdown. 

We've covered two of Michael's albums produced by Quincy Jones: Off the Wall and Thriller. What about Bad? Could it actually be better than its predecessor? Jazz pianists Peter Martin and Adam Maness deliver their final verdict on this 80s pop sensation.

Along the way, y...

Carole King’s Tapestry is so cozy, you'll want to hug it; sit with it. It sounds simple, warm, and totally unassuming. But it’s way more impressive than it seems at first.

Adam and Peter break down what’s actually going on beneath the surface of Tapestry ... and what most people miss. Carole King was already an elite songwriter long before this album. You know Aretha Franklin's “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”? Carole wrote that. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by The Shirelles? She wrote that, too. When she was just 17!

Listen closely...